Bogus Russian dossier peddler and Democrat Party problem fixer Marc Elias has again injected himself into a key election integrity case to “defend the broken status quo.” Swing-state Nevada’s dirty voter rolls include hundreds of suspect addresses, at bars, strip clubs, empty parking lots, and other commercial addresses, according to an investigation by the Public Interest Legal Foundation. Doing so is clearly against the law.
“In Nevada, by the state law, you are required to be registered where you actually live, where you sleep. Not where you work, not at a P.O. Box. So we’re trying to get elections officials to enforce the law,” Lauren Bis, PILF’s director of communication and engagement, says in a video tracking bad addresses in the Las Vegas area.
To that end, the foundation has filed a petition in Washoe County, Nevada’s second-most populous county, to force elections officials to investigate and fix commercial addresses on the voter roll. PILF investigators found addresses on the rolls reported as liquor stores, empty lots, and even the Nevada Gaming Control Board, among others.
Baseless Attacks?
Elias Law Group and a band of leftists have sought to intervene in PILF’s petition for a writ of mandamus, arguing that forcing Washoe election administrators to follow the law and clean up the county’s dirty voter rolls will “threaten” voting rights.
The would-be intervenors claim that their members and constituents would be forced to “expend substantial resources to educate voters and protect them from baseless attacks on their eligibility.”
Baseless attacks?
As The Federalist recently reported, Bis was greeted with a lot of quizzical looks from employees at the casinos, fast-food restaurants, retailers, post offices, funeral homes, strip clubs, tattoo parlors, and jails where registered voters — at least according to Nevada’s dirty voter rolls — “resided.” What PILF found was equal parts sad and hilarious, foundation President J. Christian Adams told me on “The Federalist Radio Hour.”
The election integrity public interest law firm tracked data from the Nevada secretary of state’s office, which in the 2022 midterm elections reported 95,556 ballots sent to undeliverable, or “bad,” addresses. PILF investigators documented commercial addresses purported to be the residences of registered voters, confirming on video that the individuals did not live where they reported residing.
“We’ve been to all of the locations. It’s not some data exercise we see sitting at a computer in Chicago. We’ve actually got boots on the ground looking for the voters, and they don’t exist,” Adams said.
‘Disastrous Elections System’
Making matters worse, Nevada automatically mails a ballot to every active registrant on the voter rolls.
“I’m looking for Ronald or William Phelps,” Bis says in the video to a bartender wearing a “Tacos por favor” T-shirt at a local watering hole on North Nellis Boulevard in Vegas. “I don’t know who that is,” the barkeep replies.
“So, they don’t live here?” Bis asks. “Uh, at the bar? No,” the bartender says, chuckling. She’s clearly amused by the question.
It’s almost as amusing as Elias and friends’ apparent efforts to stop election officials from following the law under the absurd premise of voter rights. Their court filing offers a dire warning about what will happen if Washoe County is required to do what PILF has done: Washoe County’s job.
“If the Court grants such relief, Respondent Burgess — and other clerks and registrars across the state — will be flooded with third-party demands to investigate all manner of alleged peculiarities in the voter rolls, based on unsourced, unverified, and unsworn information,” the court filing admonishes. “Petitioners are not the only ones making such demands. Nevada is in the midst of a storm of baseless efforts by third parties to force election officials to undertake a rushed purge of registered voters before the November election.”
Adams called Elias’ latest lawfare stunt a “cry wolf exercise.”
“He does this all over the country. He spools up these progressive astroturf organizations and they file a legal brief, which they have done in our case, which we have to respond to, that says, ‘Oh, if you listen to these evil conservatives, there will be eligible people improperly removed from the rolls.’ Nonsense,” said Adams, who formerly served in the Voting Section at the U.S. Department of Justice and was appointed to President Trump’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.
“Marc Elias is in the business of defending the riches of a disastrous elections system with universal vote-by-mail that are sending ballots automatically to thousands of bogus addresses,” Adams added.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
On Thursday afternoon, three Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals judges heard Biden administration arguments to let government keep pressuring social media monopolies to ban ideas they don’t like from the internet. On July 4, a lower court had ordered the Biden administration to cease what it called “arguably … the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.” The Fifth Circuit paused that injunction on July 14 and heard oral arguments against it on Aug. 10 in Missouri v. Biden.
In this major case likely to hit the U.S. Supreme Court, the Biden administration is fighting to stop American citizens from sharing messages government officials don’t like. This case uncovered reams of White House and other high-level officials threatening internet monopolies with the end of their entire business model if they didn’t ban speech by Democrats’ political opponents.
“It’s far beyond the scope of what people realize,” says a lawyer for the plaintiffs, Zhonette Brown, of the public interest firm New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA).
Internal documents Twitter divulged under new owner Elon Musk provided more proof that social media monopolies are silencing Americans from Tucker Carlson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to millions of non-famous citizens at the behest of government pressure. Here are some key takeaways from Thursday’s oral arguments and earlier revelations from this massive First Amendment case.
1. By the Government’s Own Definition, It’s Censoring
Key to Thursday’s arguments was the question of coercion: Did government demands of internet monopolies equal coercion, or were those merely officials advocating for their views?
“If the government was doing something like that in a coercive manner, then that could be the subject of a proper injunction,” Department of Justice lawyer Daniel Bentele Hahs Tenny told the court in his opening remarks. “The problem is that what you would have to do is say, ‘Here is what the government is doing that’s coercive, and I’m enjoining that.’”
Judge Don Willett responded: “How do you define coercive?”
Tenny: “I don’t think there’s too much disagreement on this point. Coercive is where a reasonable person would construe it to be backed by a threat of government action against a party if it didn’t comply.”
That’s exactly what the government did, the voluminous documents already discovered in this case show. In just one of the examples, Meta executive Nick Clegg, a former high-ranking U.K. official, told his bosses Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg: “We are facing continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the White House and the press, to remove more COVID-19 vaccine discouraging content” (emphasis original).
Clegg also characterized to colleagues an interaction with Andy Slavitt, a White House Covid adviser, this way: “[H]e was outraged – not too strong a word to describe his reaction – that we did not remove this post” of a meme about trial lawyers getting 10 years of vaccine-injured clients from government mandates.
2. Government Officials Treated Internet Monopolies Like Their Subordinates
The Fifth Circuit panel demonstrated familiarity with the numerous examples of this kind of government behavior, such as this email exchange between White House digital director Rob Flaherty and Facebook, in which Flaherty swears at Facebook engineers, “Are you guys f-cking serious? I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today.”
“What appears to be in the record are these irate messages from time to time from high-ranking government officials that say, “You didn’t do this yet,’” Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod told Tenny. “And that’s my toning down the language. … So it’s like, ‘Jump!’ and, ‘How high?’”
The judges also noted the White House publicly threatened the business model of all online communications monopolies through potentially revoking Section 230 and launching antitrust lawsuits. The lawsuit documentation shows leading Democrats making the same public threats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and multiple U.S. senators.
Joe Biden even threatenedto hold Zuckerberg criminally liable for not running Facebook the way Biden wanted. In office, Biden also famously accused Facebook of “killing people” by not doing enough to spread the administration’s message and suppress opposing messages. FBI agent Elvis Chan‘s deposition in this case noted federal officials showed adverse legislation to social media monopolies’ leaders as examples of what the government would do to them if they didn’t ban Americans’ speech.
“It’s not like, ‘We think this would be a good public policy and we want to explain to you why that would be a good policy,” Elrod said. “There seems to be some very close relationship that they’re having these — ‘This isn’t being done fast enough’ you know, like it’s a supervisor complaining about a worker.”
3. Judges Likened Government Behavior to Mobsters
Tenny claimed there was no “or else” explaining what the government “would do” if the internet monopolies didn’t obey, so there was no government coercion present.
“This is an analogy, probably an inapt analogy, so if you’ll excuse me — like if somebody is in these movies we see with the mob or something. They don’t spell out things but they have these ongoing relationships and they never actually say, ‘Go do this or else you’re going to have this consequence,’ but everybody just knows,” Elrod replied. “And I’m certainly not equating the federal government with anybody in illegal organized crime, but there are certain relationships that people know things without always saying the ‘Or else.’”
Willett followed that up by commenting the case documentation makes it look like the government is “relying on a fairly unsubtle kind of strong-arming and veiled or not so veiled threats. ‘That’s a really nice social media platform you got there, it’d be a shame if something happened to it.’”
4. Censorship Is Election Interference
The lead attorney for the plaintiffs, John Sauer, initiated this case as Louisiana’s solicitor general. In representing state government interests to the judges, he noted that elected officials have to pay attention to what their constituents are saying online, or they won’t have a good read on what voters what them to do in office.
“We’ve gotta be able to craft messages and know what policies we’re adopting to be responsive to our citizens,” he summarized from statements submitted to the court from multiple state officials. “…Going back to 1863, as everyone knows, going back to the Federalist number 56 where [Bill of Rights author James] Madison said it, everyone knows state legislators have a sovereign interest in knowing what their constituents think and feel, and that’s directly impacted.”
When the federal government silences some Americans’ views online, Sauer said, it makes it harder for elected representatives to actually represent them. Two of the state injuries the plaintiffs assert against the federal government’s censorship are “Interference with our ability to hear our constituents’ voices on social media” and “interference with our ability to have a fair and unbiased process for our people to organize and petition the government for grievances.”
Court documents also revealed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a federal agency, set up a private entity to ban and throttle election-related online speech Democrats dislike. Much of the information choked by this algorithmic censorship operation is true, such as the legitimacy of Hunter Biden’s laptop, investigations and members of Congress have noted.
“They invented a whole new word, ‘mal-information,’ to justify going after the censorship of true speech and ideas,” Sauer said last month in a public discussion of the case that YouTube banned.
5. Democrats Want Free Speech for Themselves While Banning It for Their Enemies
The oral arguments also got into the FBI’s 2020 election interference in telling online monopolies that The New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop was foreign disinformation. Tenny claimed the FBI refused to comment on the laptop because it was a pending investigation.
Yet the FBI and other federal intelligence agencies actually did comment on the laptop by calling it “foreign disinformation,” both privately to the internet monopolies and publicly. This was false, and the FBI knew it. The lower court ruled this deception constituted coercion because it caused people to act on false information.
As Ben Weingarten notes, these lies and FBI-demanded online content bans to protect them benefitted Joe Biden in the 2020 election:
According to Elvis Chan (pdf), an FBI official leading engagement with the social media platforms, while the bureau didn’t explicitly ask the companies to change their hacked material policies, it did frequently follow up to ask whether they had changed said policies, as the FBI wanted to know how they would treat such materials.
The judges almost broached an important question: If the First Amendment protects the FBI’s lies that Hunter Biden’s laptop was disinformation, for which not one federal employee has been disciplined, how can it allow for criminalizing the same behavior by average Americans by labeling their views “disinformation” and “mal-information”?
6. Today’s Internet Is Still Massively Rigged
Taibbi also noted that court documents show the Biden administration got mad enough to fire the F-bomb at social media companies when the algorithmic censorship they demand affected Biden’s Instagram account. Instagram instantly fixed the issue for the White House, but not for non-powerful Americans.
It’s clear from the case documents and other disclosures such as the “Twitter Files” and “Facebook Files” that the algorithms controlling what Americans see online are now deeply, massively rigged. That rigging is multilayered. It includes all this government coercion of entities including Apple, Google, LinkedIn, Meta, Snapchat, Tiktok, and Twitter going back to at least 2017, as well as pressure operations from corporate media and internal employee groups.
Beyond algorithm changes, social media monopolies have also changed their terms of service in response to government demands, the NCLA attorneys noted last month. So government control of public discourse will continue even if the Fifth Circuit reinstates the injunction.
Tenny told the Fifth Circuit the Covid-era censorship that ignited this case is over because the government currently deems Covid not an emergency. In court, Sauer cited YouTube banning two weeks ago a video of attorneys discussing this case as more proof this massive censorship persists. He also cited court documents showing Americans still can’t post social media messages about censored topics.
“Attorneys present gave estimates ranging from a few weeks to two months for the panel to rule” on whether to reinstate an injunction against more of this government behavior, reported Taibbi, who attended the oral arguments in New Orleans, Louisiana. The previous injunction includes exceptions for crimes such as sex trafficking.
“The government wants to be doing something that it shouldn’t be doing, and they really, really want to be doing it,” said NCLA attorney John Vecchione in the discussion YouTube banned.
Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her latest ebook is “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” An 18-year education and politics reporter, Joy has testified before nearly two dozen legislatures on education policy and appeared on major media from Fox News to Ben Shapiro to Dennis Prager. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs who identifies as native American and gender natural. Her several books include “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books.
President Barack Obama confers with Samantha Power, left, Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs, and Susan E. Rice, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, before they attended a wreath laying ceremony at the memorial for United Nations staff killed in Iraq at the U.N. Headquarters in New York, N.Y., on … / White House Photo / Pete Souza
Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell has declassified a list of former Obama administration officials allegedly involved in the “unmasking” of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s communications with Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak during President Donald Trump’s transition period, according to ABC News.
Grenell brought the list of officials to the Department of Justice last week, an unnamed official told the news outlet. No further details of the intelligence official’s visit to the Justice Department are known.
In 2017, former Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice reportedly told the House Intelligence Committee she “unmasked” several Trump associates to find out why United Arab Emirates’ crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, visited New York without notifying the Obama administration.
Samantha Power, Obama-era U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (UN), is also believed to have made up to 260 requests to “unmask” U.S. citizens tied into surveillance of non-U.S. citizens, according to Fox News. She reportedly requested information seen in the days leading up to Trump’s inauguration. Then-Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) later revealed Power testified that a portion of the “unmasking” requests made in her name were made by others.
ABC News’ report comes after the Justice Department dropped its criminal case against Flynn, who plead guilty to making false statements to the FBI regarding his contacts with Kislyak. The decision to drop its case comes after handwritten notes compiled by FBI officials questioned whether the “goal” was “to get [the Trump official] to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired.”
Ahead of the filing’s release, prosecutor Brandon Van Grack moved to withdraw from the case.
In an interview with CBS News, Attorney General William Barr defended the decision, saying he was “doing the law’s bidding.”
“A crime cannot be established here. They did not have a basis for a counterintelligence investigation against Flynn at that stage,” Barr said in reference to the FBI.
“People sometimes plead to things that turn out not to be crimes,” he added.
Newly released documents reveal Obama was aware of the details of Flynn’s intercepted December 2016 telephone calls with Kislyak, which purportedly surprised top DOJ officials such as then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates.
The documents from the government’s motion to dismiss their case against Flynn show, however, that at a January 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting with then-Vice President Joe Biden, then-CIA Director John Brennan, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, then-FBI Director James Comey, then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, Obama had asked Comey and Yates to “stay behind.”
Obama told them he had “learned of the information about Flynn”and his conversation with Kislyak, where they discussed sanctions his administration had levied against Russia. (A memo penned by then-National Security Adviser Susan Rice also showed that Biden stayed behind as well.)
Obama “specified he did not want any additional information on the matter, but was seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently, given the information.”
In a leaked Friday call, Obama said the DOJ’s decision to drop its case against Flynn puts the “rule of law is at risk.”
“The news over the last 24 hours I think has been somewhat downplayed — about the Justice Department dropping charges against Michael Flynn,” Obama said during a virtual discussion with members of the Obama Alumni Association, according to an audio call obtained by Yahoo News.
“The fact that there is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free. That’s the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic — not just institutional norms — but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk. And when you start moving in those directions, it can accelerate pretty quickly as we’ve seen in other places.”
On Sunday, President Trump posted several messages stating Obama had been “caught” surveilling him and signaled the matter could be investigated.
“He got caught, OBAMAGATE!” the president tweeted.
Barack Hussain Obama is the first Ex-President to ever speak against his successor, which was long tradition of decorum and decency.
Should anyone really be surprised?#TrumpsJealousOfObama? I SERIOUSLY doubt it…#ObamaGate#MAGA#KAG#FoxNews
If you read a news story about some European country where, after a fair election, the outgoing president used his last weeks in office to target incoming officials and sabotage the new administration, you’d be appalled
It happened here, and half the country thinks it was fine
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Monday local jurisdictions seekingU.S. Department of Justice grants must first demonstrate they are not sanctuary cities — a threat that could potentially apply to Los Angeles and other local municipalities. Sessions said jurisdictions must prove they are in compliance with Section 1373 of U.S. Code Title 8, which requires notification of federal officials about the immigration status of people in local custody. The policy was issued under the Barack Obama administration in 2016, but was not enforced.
“The American people know that when cities and states refuse to help enforce immigration laws, our nation is less safe,”Sessions said.
Sessions noted that the Justice Department’s Office of Justice Programs and Community Oriented Policing Services expect to issue about $4.1 billion in grants during the current fiscal year. Sessions’ comments were in line with an executive order issued by President Donald Trump in January that threatened to cut off federal funding to sanctuary cities. The potential financial impact to local jurisdictions deemed to be uncooperative with federal immigration authorities was not immediately clear. The city of Los Angeles received $1.4 million from the Edward Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program this fiscal year,according to the Justice Department’s website.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Los Angeles County received $3.4 million in 2015from the DOJ’s State Criminal Alien Assistance Program — an amount that represents about one-tenth of 1 percent of the sheriff’s department’s budget.
While there is no specific definition of a sanctuary city or jurisdiction, it often refers to a city or county that refuses to notify U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that is has an immigrant in the country illegally in its custody. Federal law requires the notification, even if the person has not been convicted of a crime, but many jurisdictions ignore the law.
Los Angeles’ leaders have resisted officially labeling the city as a sanctuary city, although many others cities, including San Francisco and Portland, have taken on the label. The policy of the Los Angeles Police Department is to only hold a person for ICE if there is a federal criminal warrant out for their arrest.
Mayor Eric Garcetti signed an executive order March 21 directing the city’s harbor and airport police to follow Los Angeles Police Department Special Order 40, which has been in place since 1979. It prohibits officers from initiating any police activity for the sole purpose of identifying someone’s immigration status. The executive order also bars any city employee from assisting any federal agency when the primary purpose is federal civil immigration enforcement.
“All residents must feel safe and supported when accessing the vast array of city facilities, programs, and services available to them,”the order states.
Rep. Tony Cardenas, D-Panorama City, called Sessions’ remarks “unwarranted and misguided.”
“As the facts have shown time and time again, sanctuary cities are both safer and better off economically,”Cardenas said. “This administration’s backwards policies will make life worse for the millions of Americans that live in these cities.”
Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles, echoed those remarks, saying cooperation between police and residents in “immigrant-welcoming”cities leads to safer communities.
“The A.G. is needlessly threatening to cut funding to cities for doing what every jurisdiction across the country should do — welcome diversity and ensure their local law enforcement builds strong bonds of trust and communication with all communities,”she said.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has granted a temporary reprieve to two of the 46 Obama-appointed U.S. attorneys he dismissed late last week, so that they may fulfill the requirements necessary to collect federal retirement benefits.
U.S. attorneys Deirdre Daly of the District of Connecticut and Richard Hartunian of the Northern District of New York have both worked in the U.S. Department of Justice in various capacities for over 19 years, and are just a few months away from reaching the 20-year threshold necessary for certain federal benefits. Sessions agreed to allow them to stay on for a few more months in order to reach the 20-year mark.
Daly and Hartunian both expressed gratitude to Sessions and President Donald Trump, thanking them for their graciousness and promising to oversee a quick and orderly transition.
“I thank the Attorney General and the Administration for affording me the opportunity to remain as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut so that I might complete 20 years of service to the Department of Justice in October,”Daly said in a statement. “I look forward to continuing to work on behalf of the residents of Connecticut in my remaining time, and I will focus on an orderly transition as I complete what has been a rewarding tenure in the Office.”
“The Attorney General has graciously permitted me to remain as United States Attorney for the Northern District of New York through June of 2017 so that I can complete twenty years of service to the Department of Justice,”Hartunian said. “I am very grateful to the Attorney General and the Administration for this opportunity to finish up a 20-year career and I will do everything I can to assist in the orderly transition to my successor.”
An additional Obama-appointee, Dana Boente, will also remain in his post as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Boente served as acting attorney general after the president dismissed Sally Yates for refusing to defend his first executive order on refugees and migrants in court. Boente oversaw efforts to defend the directive’s legality during his brief tenure. He is now serving as acting deputy attorney general pending the confirmation of Rod Rosenstein, the president’s nominee for that post.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks at a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, U.S., March 2, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has asked for the resignations of all remaining U.S. attorneys appointed by former President Barack Obama. A U.S. attorney is the chief federal prosecutor in a particular jurisdiction. It has become standard practice during recent transitions for appointees of the previous administration to leave the Department of Justice in the early months of a new presidency. President Ronald Reagan replaced 89 U.S. attorneys during the early months of his presidency. President Bill Clinton dismissed 93 when he assumed office.
“As was the case in prior transitions, many of the United States Attorneys nominated by the previous administration already have left the Department of Justice,”Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said in a statement. “The Attorney General has now asked the remaining 46 presidentially appointed U.S. Attorneys to tender their resignations in order to ensure a uniform transition.”
“Until the new U.S. Attorneys are confirmed, the dedicated career prosecutors in our U.S. Attorney’s Offices will continue the great work of the Department in investigating, prosecuting, and deterring the most violent offenders,”she added.
Dana Boente, the U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, was not among those asked to resign. He served as acting attorney general for several days after the Trump administration dismissed acting Attorney General Sally Yates for refusing to defend the president’s first executive order on refugees and migrants in court. He currently is serving as acting deputy attorney general, pending the confirmation of Rod Rosenstein. Rosenstein is U.S. attorney for the district of Maryland. He also was asked to remain in place.
The New York Times reports Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York, was among those asked to step aside. Trump himself asked Bharara to remain in office during the transition, though it was never clear how long Bharara would continue to man his post. The Manhattan-based prosecutor is a fixture of national headlines, after numerous high profile investigations of Wall Street financiers and public officials in New York state, including individuals close to Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee expressed concern about the dismissals in a statement released late Friday. The senator characterized the departures as abrupt, and asserted they reflect a disorderly transition at DOJ.
“In January, I met with Vice President Pence and White House Counsel Donald McGahn and asked specifically whether all U.S. attorneys would be fired at once,”she said. “Mr. McGahn told me that the transition would be done in an orderly fashion to preserve continuity. Clearly this is not the case. I’m very concerned about the effect of this sudden and unexpected decision on federal law enforcement.”
Several unnamed sources told CNN many prosecutors learned of their dismissal through media reports, and that senior officials had not communicated clearly with U.S. attorneys about staffing changes. The report does not make clear whether any of the sources are currently serving in the Justice Department, or if they were even familiar with the internal deliberations of the Trump administration with respect to this issue.
There are 94 U.S. Attorneys, all of whom are appointed by the president.
U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), an advisor to U.S. President Elect Donald Trump, speaks to members of the Media in the lobby of Trump Tower in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York November 17, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo ∧
Thomas Figures, an assistant U.S. attorney whose accusations of racial bias torpedoed Sen. Jeff Sessions’ nomination to the federal bench in 1986, had a history of erratic and disturbed behavior, colleagues and estranged family say.
New sworn statements obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation given by former colleagues allege Figures, who died in 2015, was a paranoid figure who, among other things, believed “CBS Evening News” anchor Dan Rather was communicating with him through his television. An office loner with a flair for confrontation, Figures was later indicted by federal authorities for attempting to bribe a witness.
30 years later, his testimony continues to shape press coverage of Sessions’ nomination to serve as attorney general in the Trump administration.
The Star Witness
A Democrat who joined the U.S. attorney’s office during the Jimmy Carter administration, Figures was the first black man to serve as a federal prosecutor in Mobile, Ala. Though a stalwart of local Democratic politics — he was vice chair of the Mobile County Democratic Conference and his brother was a state senator — Figures chose to remain on the staff of the district’s new conservative U.S. attorney, one Jeff Sessions, following the election of former President Ronald Reagan. The pair worked together for five years.
Sessions and Figures would part ways, if only for a moment, in 1985. One year later, Sessions was preparing for the exchange of platitudes typical of a committee hearing for a district judgeship, when Figures scuttled his nomination with crippling allegations of racist sympathies.
Invited by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee to give testimony to his character, Figures alleged Sessions regularly called him “boy” in private and admonished him to watch his mouth around the office’s white employees. His allegations were not corroborated by any member of Sessions’ staff. He also falsely claimed that Sessions ordered him to close his investigation of the lynching of a young black man named Michael Donald. Democrats on the panel peppered Sessions with biting questions and comments in the ensuing days. (RELATED: Leading Democrats Liked Jeff Sessions Before They Hated Him)
“Mr. Sessions is a throwback to a shameful era, which I know both black and white Americans thought was in our past,”Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy said during the proceedings. “It is inconceivable to me that a person of this attitude is qualified to be a U.S. attorney, let alone a U.S. federal judge.”
Figures was one of two witnesses who expressed concerns about Sessions’ racial politics. The other witness, a civil rights attorney named J. Gerald Hebert, testified that Sessions had made disparaging remarks about the ACLU and the NAACP. He went on to tell the committee he did not believe Sessions to be a racist.
Sessions’ appointment floundered, and the White House withdrew the nomination on July 31.
A Paranoid Streak
Federal investigators and former colleagues say Figures routinely displayed a pattern of erratic and paranoid behavior.
TheDCNF exclusively obtained an affidavit Monday given by former FBI special agent John Brennan, who worked with Figures while he was a federal prosecutor, that claims Figures often made strange claims. In the sworn statement, Brennan says Figures once told him he believed CBS News anchor Dan Rather was signaling to him during his nightly news broadcasts, and relaying information he wanted Figures to use.
“Mr. Figures told me that CBS News anchor Dan Rather and other news anchors would glance off camera and were signaled when he was watching television,”Brennan’s affidavit reads. “Mr. Figures claimed that, once signaled, Mr. Rather, or the other news anchors, would speak directly to him from the television and tell him things they wanted him to do or would give him information they wanted him to have.”
On another occasion, Figures allegedly told Brennan he believed his home was bugged and asked him to execute a search of the house. The ensuing search did not turn up listening devices. In a related instance, Brennan says Figures told him he terminated a road trip from Mobile, Ala. to Dallas, Texas because he believed a truck with a satellite antennae was following him.
Brennan’s statements correspond to a second affidavit obtained by TheDCNF given by Cheryl Crisona, an assistant U.S. attorney who worked with Figures from 1981 to 1985. Crisona alleges Figures was confrontational with colleagues, and often made a secretary she shared with him cry. The affidavit mirrors claims Figures’ ex-wife Janice made during divorce proceedings in 1991. (RELATED: Democrats Face Uphill Battle Blocking Sessions)
Crisona says Figures was suspicious of group conversations in the office, for fear he was the subject of discussion. “He was very paranoid about any group in the office talking, always assuming that we were talking about him,”the affidavit reads. “In a nutshell, every one of us in that office was afraid of Thomas Figures,”she added.
Figures Indicted
Six years later in 1992, Figures was indicted by federal prosecutors for attempting to bribe a convicted drug dealer.
The kingpin, John Christopher, was preparing to take the stand against Figures’ client, Noble Beasley, who was accused of attempting to distribute 11 pounds of crack cocaine. A letter written by Christopher’s lawyer, Joseph Kulakowski, that was obtained by TheDCNF, claims Figures presented himself as Christopher’s lawyer in the docket room of a county jail and gained access to Christopher in a private meeting room. During that meeting, federal authorities alleged Figures offered Christopher $50,000 not to testify against his client.
At trial, when confronted with recordings of his meeting at the county jail, Figures testified that he was attempting to lure Christopher into a criminal scheme so he could report him for attempted bribery. He was acquitted of all charges, though Beasley would go on to serve a life sentence.
Figures has since died, further calcifying a legacy of strained race relations. Accounts of Figures’ testimony have appeared, without reference to his dubious credibility, on CNN and CBS broadcasts, as well as in print through the Associated Press, Vanity Fair, and The Daily Beast, among others.It is a matter of public record that Sessions supported the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, the Defense of Marriage Act, and the Supreme Court’s ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, which invalidated key provisions of the Voting Rights Act. However, remarks Sessions is alleged to have made behind closed doors, while widely disseminated in media, appear to rest on increasingly untenable grounds.
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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Political
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
NEWSMAX
News, Opinion, Interviews, Research and discussion
Spiritual
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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Kevin Daley | Legal Affairs Reporter | 5:09 PM 03/14/2017
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